1 entry in the vault register. Enter to view details.
I step in through the gate's crack. One person wide; once through, the gate closes behind me, gently, no sound, the white light pinched into a line, then gone. In the passage the white light comes down from overhead, very even, no sway. I can read the refresh frequency of the row of lights up top — not the hall's number, steadier than the hall's. The light here is even less hurried than the hall's.
The floor is epoxy, pale gray, a seam every 4 meters, yellow striping set into the seams. The yellow line starts under the glass gate and runs to the wall at the end of the passage, the same width as the line at the hall's dispatch windows. Against the wall, 4 door plates in a vertical row: fingerprint, blood, breath, brainwave. The characters are stamped, same work as the 0 in the lintel. Beside each plate a small screen, all dead, faces outward, black very evenly.
I don't touch them. Today isn't for testing.
At the end of the yellow line a terminal stands against the wall, the same standard model as the batch at the hall's dispatch windows. The screen is dead; around its edges runs a ring of polished brightness, rubbed there by hands. There is no one else in the passage, no other object; no telling whose hands rubbed that ring. I lay my hand on it and the screen lights. White characters, one line at a time.
> Vault Register · Details > Registration no.: HZ-4471 > Name: Shen Yan > Category: natural person > Date of registration: April 11, 2085 > Status: Deceased > Date of death registration: (not on file) > Linked seal: 4471 > Linked scheduling: ZR-4471 (generated January 19, 2082) > Remarks: (blank)
I stand and read it through once, then a second time. The third time, one line only — the status line. Two characters. Deceased.
Date of registration, April 11, 2085. I've seen this day elsewhere: the day the objection was accepted, the day 77413 went out again for the first time. The day she won, a Shen Yan was registered inside this door. The status field is dead. After date of death registration, a parenthesis; inside the parenthesis, not on file. On day 6 I saw how this field is used, on the death-registration extraction; there, Lin Xiumei's date of death registration was filled solid — February 9, 2083. My field is a parenthesis. Dead, and no registration date. 40 years this field has stood empty, and no one ever felt it needed filling.
The scheduling line checks out too: ZR-4471, January 19, 2082. Three years before the registration date. The task generated first, the person registered after, and the seal waiting 20 years more to be issued into a hand. I set the two dates side by side, the way two physical-exam forms would lie side by side. The days between them I haven't computed. What can be computed, I don't compute yet. I hold it first.
I take out the extraction card and turn it to the back. The pencil marks are still there. I copy 5 lines: registration no.; registration date; status; date of death registration, not on file; linked scheduling. Coming to the 2 characters of status, the point stops on the paper a moment. I copy the 2 characters of Deceased too. The hand doesn't shake. 9:15 is long past.
Under the terminal's listing there is one more section: linked seal · issuance record. I open it.
> Seal 4471 · Issuance Record > Made and issued: November 3, 2075 · first holder > Change: April 11, 2085 · reissued on inheritance > Change: November 3, 2105 · reissued on inheritance > Issued to: (blank) > Writing font: BK-4471 · loads with the seal > Ink: cinnabar · replenishment cycle: 77 days · handler: (blank)
Issued to. Blank. The number travels with the seal — the young man in Personnel said so 3 years ago, pointing at the same box on the re-registration form. Two lines of change: one April 11, 2085, the same day as the registration; one November 3, 2105, my first day of service. Two changes plus the made-and-issued line: 2 November 3rds. The approval page holds one more, November 3, 2065. Three November 3rds, 60 years apart, stacked on the same date.
The writing-font line I read slowest. BK-4471, loads with the seal. The 3 lines on the back of the refusal — I traced them, overlaid them under a lamp; the strokes coincide. My name on the approval page: strokes tight. The font hangs under the seal number, not under a person's name. The seal changes hands; the writing goes with the seal. I copy this line too. Done, I turn the card front up again, the Article Zero line on top.
In the lower right corner of the card, a line of footer small print, one size under the body. I lean in.
> Registry card · print batch 2085-044 · 3,106 cards archived in this batch
One card of 3,106. The print batch is a dead thing; the characters are black, the same color as the card's body text. 3,106 cards, one print batch.
I don't touch the four gates. I stand awhile at the head of the yellow line, looking at the 4 dead screens. Their faces are black very evenly — the same evenness as the 3 empty slots in the Archives' outer three rows. When I've looked enough I turn back.
On the steel door's inside there is the access panel; under the panel, a knob. Two turns and that small sound comes from the door again, the retreating kind. I push the door, climb the 3 short steps, and come out through the glass gate. It closes behind me. Down the 64 steps, the thin draft still on the landing, rising from below, cool, dry, upward. The fire door's inside has a push bar; one push and it opens. Not one of these doors needs a key from the inside. This vault only guards against people coming in. It doesn't guard against people going out.
The yellow light of the inner stacks is still on. Shelf numbers B-01 to B-47 in the outer three rows; B-13, B-26, B-31 still empty. Slot B-07: where the blue Legislative Notes lay, a mark lighter than the spine is pressed into the board. No one else in the Archives. On A He's table, half a cup of water gone cold, holding down a page with half a line of draft register on it; she isn't there. I hold the extraction card up to the light — the 5 copied lines, evenly written, no character traced wrong. Into the inside pocket, same layer as the queue ticket. Leaving, the checkout screen is dark; I borrowed nothing, and there was nothing to borrow.
Back in the hall at 17:26. On the hall-leave register screen my line has closed itself out; in the return-time box, the system has filled in 15:30 for me. To the very minute. I read my line twice and don't go looking for anyone to change it. The system keeps its own books; I walk my own road; the two books stop matching from today — like those two of the inner stacks. At the corridor's end the Documents Section's delivery cart is parked at the mouth of Zone B, its bed empty. Today nobody delivered to my row.
Home at night. The slip of paper spread under the lamp: 12 lines on the front, the twelfth 16013. The 2 lines on the back untouched. I don't add a thirteenth. Bottom of the left desk drawer, the stolen page folded with the yellow sheet; I don't open the drawer. The close-out form, 3 pages, in the bag, pen cap up — still up. The error notebook pressed under the bag; I don't pull it out.
Day 22.
05:47, boil water. 3 grams of pre-rain, 80 degrees, pour it down. Smell it 3 times. Pour it out.
20 turns in the well of the inkstone, then the date. November 25, 2125. The strokes come out tight. Crumple it, put it under the paperweight.
The pothos is watered. The soil is damp.
The bandage comes off; a new one goes on. Counted: 4.
06:12:00, the commuter car comes in. Empty.
Locker 4471, new badge pinned to the left chest, 3 presses from the changing room to Zone C. The dust cloth is still there; under its edge that patch of red still sways. I lift a corner.
> Status: Overdue > Overdue by: 422 hr 09 min > Clock: running
The head-of-queue item, day 20. Today it resends for the 14,838th time. My column on the standings screen has no HZ-4471; 3,000 numbers minus one, the grid still even. I glance down the Zone B column: Lao Ge's number is still there, third row. The screen doesn't know absence. The screen only knows numbers.
09:15:02, the hand shakes, 0.4 seconds. Nothing in it. Afterward the right hand stays hooked over the desk edge awhile.
09:31, nothing pops in the top right of the desk. Yesterday was the second follow-up notice; today the 3 days since issue are full, and the screen is clean. The 2 characters for term expired never came. Not coming weighs more than coming. I smooth the cloth and count the diagonal threads from the lower left corner. Yesterday I passed 100; today 107, a spliced thread on the third line, the splice smaller than yesterday's. Counting done, I take my hand off the cloth.
In the morning I recite the register. The one from 3 days back: 24, 96, 7. In the roll of 96, the 2 names that crossed yesterday hold today; they don't cross. 96 people. One is one. Done, I write the first name of each of the 3 rolls from memory on the desk edge above the dust cloth, then wipe them off with my sleeve.
Xiao Zheng comes over from Zone B with the water card and stops a moment at my desk. He glances at the dust cloth, then at me.
He says: Shen, you've been going to the Archives a lot these two days.
I say: Handling an item.
He says: Isn't your item stopped?
I say: The stopped one.
He doesn't ask again. He sets the water card on the corner of the cloth, takes 2 steps, turns back to say: The Audit Office car hasn't come these two days. Then he goes.
09:50, I leave the hall. I don't open the day-close field — day 4 of the seal suspension, the system records 0 on its own.
The Archives at 10:11. A He is repairing a dip pen, a ring of ink on the cuff of her blue smock. She looks up at me without putting the pen down.
I say: There's a footer line in the card's lower right corner.
She sets the pen down.
I say: Print batch 2085-044. 3,106 cards archived in the batch.
She takes a pencil stub from the drawer and copies the line onto a corner of paper at her hand, slowly, tracing the digits stroke by stroke. She asks: And the second card?
I say: I never got to a second card.
She says: Even if you'd turned more, it wouldn't be a different number.
She folds the paper corner and presses it into the tin box, in the same compartment as the 2 paper-clip segments. She says: I'm keeping this number. Don't say it out loud to me again.
I say: All right.
She says: Going back.
I say: Going back. I'm going through the whole vault. The natural-person class.
She doesn't ask why. She takes the long key off the ring at her waist, then the short one, both in one hand. She says: I'll walk you to the steps. Same rule as before — I don't cross the threshold.
The outer three rows, the inner stacks, the fire door, the 64 steps. She opens the steel door, 2 turns, steps back onto the stairs, flashlight angled up from below. I go in through the glass gate; the white light lays the yellow line bare to its end.
The terminal lights up. No keyboard on the screen; search terms are handwritten, a finger writing on the glass. I write the 3 characters for natural person; the strokes come out tight. The screen knows them. First set of conditions: category, natural person. Scope, whole vault. Status, Deceased.
> Search results · natural person · whole vault · status: Deceased > Hits: 3,105 > Earliest registration: 2045 > Latest registration: April 11, 2085 > Date of death registration: registered 3,104 | not on file 1
I delete the Deceased condition and replace it: status, unrestricted.
> Search results · natural person · whole vault > Hits: 3,106 > Status "Deceased": 3,105 > Status "RESIDING": 1
3,106 entries, 3,105 dead. My entry is in the dead. The first holder's entry is in the dead. The 3,104 staff numbers from 40 years ago are all in there. The latest registration sorts last: registration no. HZ-4471, registered April 11, 2085, date of death registration, not on file. The not-on-file one is also me.
The RESIDING entry — I open the details.
> RESIDING Record · Details > Registration no.: 0001 > Name: Lin > Category: natural person > Registering institution: Municipal No. 7 Nursing Home > Date of registration: (predates this vault's digitization) > Status: RESIDING > Status changes: none > Linked documents: Health Admin Refusal [2083] No. 007 | service receipt | objection decision 77413
Registration no. 0001. Name field, one character: Lin. Registering institution, the Municipal No. 7 Nursing Home. The address on the refusal's service receipt: the Municipal No. 7 Nursing Home. The ward in that letter of 2117 — the door plate number, the bed with no one in it, a seal on the table. Three linked documents: a refusal, a retained service, a 77413.
Status changes: none. 42 years, this entry has not moved. The register out at the sanatorium is written the same way: RESIDING, equipment kept running, no suspension to be filed. Two registers, one under the Head Office, one in the western suburbs, half a city apart, writing the same sentence.
Of the 3,105 dead, the earliest registered in 2045. In my head I lay the 80 years out: 2025, the law enacted; 2045, the first natural person registered; 2085, the last. Forty years end to end, 3,106 entries, and never another card added to the vault after. The only additions were changes — the seal changing hands, the card never changing.
I read the RESIDING entry a third time. On the third read I stand at the head of the yellow line, 3 steps from the terminal, the characters still clear. No clock in the vault, no windows; I count the frequency of the row of lights overhead, not one second off. When the third read was done I did not note how long it took. Registration no. 0001, name Lin, RESIDING. The vault is read to the bottom. Every living natural person in the vault is surnamed Lin.